


Dare to Dream

by Like_a_Hurricane



Series: Pernicious Prompting [31]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dreamwalking, M/M, Voyeurism, abuse of the Astral Plane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 08:47:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4781162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Like_a_Hurricane/pseuds/Like_a_Hurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark is given a puzzle-box found concealed in the floor of Loki’s cell, after his supposed death. It seems to contain dreams in it, and according to Thor... at least one of them is Tony’s. Of course, the inventor MUST KNOW which dream, then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dare to Dream

“It seems, before my brother’s death, he was dreamwalking more often than not,” Thor explained, as he set down a strange metallic dodecahedron, most but not all of its sides bearing various symbols. Two of the object's twelve sides had been left perfectly smooth, suggesting a work left unfinished. A greenish glow escaped from a few narrow crevices on each side, and the whole device made Tony’s hands itch the moment it rested on his lab table. “Sif searched his cell, after his passing, and found this concealed under a section of the floor. My brother was known for the intricacy of his puzzle-boxes to conceal his secrets and Asgard’s mages cannot penetrate it, but did determine that some of the dreams within it had origins on Earth.”

“Odin couldn’t crack it or something?” the inventor asked.

“He determined that the contents were... not ones he wished to unlock, for the privacy of the dreamers Loki visited, and collected those dreams. A few are Loki’s himself. He is not possessed of the gift of prophecy like his daughter, but has occasionally been known to glimpse things while walking the paths of the Astral Plane. This device captured and recorded events unfolding around him along his walks.”

“Privacy?” Tony asked. “For a guy who is supposedly all-seeing, that’s pretty tactful, I guess.”

“He implied that seeing his own sons in compromising positions was never his favorite hobby, and Loki had very... hedonistic habits. It is perfectly likely he planted a few dreams that he knew my father never wanted to see,” Thor remarked flatly.

Trying very hard not to think about a couple of dreams he’d been aroused and confused by since the invasion of New York, the inventor threw out a desperate witticism. “Nothing involving horses?”

Thunder boomed outside.

Tony held up both hands. _Wrong witticism_. “Hey, sorry, but you guys inspired a religion down here, after all. My bad.”

“I can assure you that particular tale is myth, or there would be a stallion’s skin decorating a hall in Asgard somewhere.”

The inventor nodded fervently. “I totally get that. So... what am I supposed to do with it if your mages can’t crack it?”

“Given it has dreams originating from this world, and only Odin could open it in mine, could your scientific forms of magic not potentially meet the challenge?” Thor asked, smirking slightly. “Either lock it away where no one will find out at least one dream in there seems to be yours-”

Tony gave a surprised cough. “What?!”

“I do not believe that I wish to know why you seem alarmed by this.”

“I don’t like my brain being invaded!”

“Not your thoughts, not truly. Only the events of a dream.”

“Still, my dreams make my daily life look... clean-living. Just generally speaking,” Tony protested. “Always been that way. For all I know it’s a nightmare your bro could’ve learned about the arc reactor from.”

Thor nodded solemnly. “Your secrets are your own. My father’s are his. My brother’s have been taken with him to the grave. Therefore, Tony, consider this a gift.”

The inventor nodded thoughtfully, picking up the heavier-than-it-looked box. “Okay then.” He accidentally depressed one section, and another opened on the other side, just a crack to let out more eerie green light. “Well... this could take a while.”

The thunderer smiled faintly. “Any other questions?”

“I know the runes by now, but what the heck is this design on this side all intricately carved and squiggly?”

“Mages, over time, develop their own languages in relation to magic, and my brother was no different. He has a veritable alphabet of sigils which arrange in his personal seals to achieve certain spell effects.”

“Looks like a snowflake merged with bits of antique Chinese alphabet here and there, but otherwise still mostly viking, I guess,” Tony mused. “Fly back home, Sparky. I have work to do, thanks to you.”

Thor inclined his head in a nod and strode from the lab. “Best of luck to you, Tony,” he called over his shoulder, then laughed when he looked back and just saw the inventor staring hard at the box and continuing to wave him off with one hand.

~~

It took over a week for Tony to break down and call a magic expert.

“Hello, Mr. Stark, what’s the occasion?” Strange asked over the phone.

“I’ve got a mystic puzzle box of nicked and recorded dreams and memories that you don’t want to look inside, trust me, but I now must know, so I could use a hand figuring out how it works, if you might lend an ear or two an the grey matter between them, Strangelove? Pretty please?”

A small, slightly exasperated sigh from the sorcerer’s end followed. “What?”

“A dreamwalker strolled the Astral Plane with some sort of device that could absorb and record the scenery around him, including that of any dreams he stepped into. At least one is mine, and I want to know which one the fucker stole.”

“Hmm. Well, that’s a new one. I’ve never heard of such a trick with dreams as well as Astral memory-walking.”

“Well... it was Loki, so the tech side of it is probably based on something from elsewhere around the nine realms. The puzzle exterior is maddening enough, but I figure if you can give me an idea how the interior might theoretically work, I might be able to make more sense of these symbols. But I can tell you, this thing is so damned sturdy it is rocket-proof.”

“You shot it with a rocket?”

“Yeah, I got pissed off a little, on day four.”

This time Strange laughed at him softly. “And which day is this?”

“Saturday.”

The sorcerer clicked his tongue. “Alright, then. To record events happening around oneself on the Astral Plane is not entirely unheard of, and usually it is... more like a still photograph, unless additional spellwork adds characters with speaking roles instead of still ones. What is the device shaped like?”

“Well, a dodecahedron to start, but when shot with a rocket it became perfectly spherical and seamless for an entire day before slowly all the seams and pressure-points, and irritating sliding bits that make little sense slowly returned to flesh out the surface, and now it’s a cube.”

“Fascinating,” Strange mused. “I would like to see the device, if you don’t mind.”

Tony hit a few buttons on his Starkpad and enabled a video conference. “You see it on your device there?”

“...This device has video conferencing?”

“Yeah, I know you prefer reflective surfaces, especially without warning––by the way, never in my shower please, Nat told me about that one-”

“It was accidental!” he sounded sincerely embarrassed. “I saw nothing of-”

“Yeah, she told me that, too, but I’m just saying.”

Strange sighed. “The simpler symbols are runes, of course, but bring the camera closer to the more intricate seal on the top, please?”

Tony lowered the device a bit. “Yeah, Thor confirmed before he buggered off back to Asgard that it’s one of Loki’s personal seals, of which he apparently has dozens, and nobody’s seen this one before.”

“I can vaguely make out an intention to lock and irritate, but the rest is... entirely unfamiliar. I hate mages over a thousand years old; they have far too much time to create their own written languages of sorts and too few ever bother translating them for others later,” the sorcerer muttered.

“Irritate?”

“He is a trickster god, is he not?”

Tony’s lips formed a thoughtful moue, then twisted, and he shrugged. “I see your point, I guess.”

“They love to irk and annoy, but the sigils used are strangely altered. I’ve seen similar alterations from relics of Alfheim I’ve studied with your Avengers, but not enough to fully translate.”

“Alfheim...” Tony slowly tilted his head and squinted. “Did you just see the seal move in the corner?”

“I did. Interesting. What set it off?”

Abruptly the whole thing made a series of clicking noises and became a dodecahedron again, still with the seal on top, now unaltered.

“You must let me study that in person, someday.”

“Only once my dreams are out of it. You mentioned recording on the Astral Plane is a thing? How exactly?”

“It requires a liquid, suspended sphere of matter, usually water, but sometimes a potion or other reflective medium, colored black or silver at its core, and another transparent bubble around it of a medium that is enchanted with Astral memory, to record the reflections across the sphere’s surface.”

“So it records a 360º view?”

“Not just a view. It’s a bubble of the Astral Plane itself trapped in the reflections, so ‘replaying’ it brings you into the bubble itself. You step out of normal reality briefly.”

“Great. So this could be a trap?”

“Most such bubbles are fragile. I find kicking out a window can usually shatter them, without magic. They do fade like dreams, which can be disconcerting.”

“So how’s playback usually work?”

“Once a recording is completed, it is placed in a lantern-like device capable of broadcasting it around a user like light from a lantern, forming a temporary Astral bubble around a user separating them from the rest of the outside world until the caster calls a halt and steps back into the real world, out of a window or through a door for preference. I don’t recommend jumping off of anything or your landing could suffer for it. If an entire dream is recorded, instead of a single scene with possibly a Guide spell to chat with awhile as is common, I presume waiting for it to end would be an option too.”

“So theoretically this ‘box’ has multiple bubbles in it?”

“Yes, it would seem so.”

Tony’s eyebrows raised a little. “Maybe there are separate compartments.”

“Do let me know what you find. I fear Fury is now calling me on another line.”

“Thanks, Strangelove.”

The sorcerer made a small exasperated noise. “Goodbye, Stark.”

_Click._

Tony slowly rotated the twelve-sided box, examining the runes on each side. The word “Alfheim” and it’s effect on the box kept replaying in his head, over and over. He turned it upside-down so the most intricate seal was on the table. “Ten decorated sides... nine realms, but it was unwilling to show more than six sides until a realm was mentioned, maybe? A non-threatening one? Or was it time-lapse like your transformation out of sphere-mode?”

Sitting back on his stool, he tilted it up to glance at the seal again and realized the shiny reflective surface of his lab table reflected an image that didn’t look quite like the seal itself. Leaning closer, it looked like it must be viewed from underwater, waving and animated. The seal itself when Tony looked at it, wasn’t.

“Friday, do we have any concave mirrors laying around?”

~~

Holding the box over a concave, mirrored surface, the seal seemed to writhe a little as Tony raised it up and lowered it, trying to get whatever image it was into focus. Eventually it formed nine circles within the world tree, with one of the creepiest things Tony had ever seen twisted around and gnawing at its roots. Each of the worlds, as he squinted at them, seemed to display...

“Runes. Aha, and they correlate with the other sides!” Tony tilted the box, until it showed one of the other sides, and the runes and infuriating sliding/pressure-sensitive and other interactive interlocked pieces suddenly formed a constellation that the inventor stared at for three full minutes, barely moving, except to squint a lot and make tiny adjustments to the device’s position above its own reflection to sharpen focus here and there.

They showed familiar sides of the device: each with its own rune. It showed them in a particular order and below each rune was (although seeing those bits clearly was the hardest part to decipher) images of which switch or button or sliding piece to interact with, in a specific order: a code to open that particular side.

Congratulating himself then, Tony sat back, closed his eyes for a few moments, and reviewed the combo he’d just memorized. “This better not be a trap.” He found the pieces across six different sides, twisting, pressing, and finally trying to twist the top and bottom halves gently, then with more force and sucked in a break when this time, it untwisted a crack like the top and body of a pickle jar, and the eerie green light leaking out was very bright indeed. Almost blinding.

Tony twisted a little further and heard a click. Further, and another two clicks.

The whole room when green and then... gold. Torchlit gold.

Tony realized he was standing up now, with palm-up and the eerily-glowing box perched atop it. One side of it had opened and shone green light forwards.

All around him seemed to be the throne room of Asgard. He was very uncomfortable feeling so dwarfed by all the pillars and even the oversized armored guards at the base of every other pillar... and then he spotted a figure his own size strolling forward toward the throne upon which Loki perched as though he owned it, scepter not in sight, but with his hands on each arm of the throne.

The inventor realized the figure walking up to the god was himself, and started fast-walking to catch up as his brain whirled with questions he didn’t know if he honestly wanted answered.

Who was he kidding? Of course he did.

If only he knew why all the guards were apparently leaving at a wave of Loki’s hand. When they were all gone, the echo of the doors to the throne room locking made the non-dream Tony Stark nearly jump out of his skin. He then struggled not to drop the box for a moment, nor touch it much with his other hand lest the surreal vision stop or some booby trap be set off.

When he next looked up, he was on the bottom step leading to the seat Loki occupied, and his dream-self had reached the top one asking jovially, “Ooh, privacy. Special occasion?”

“That’s rather up to you, is it not, Anthony?”

Something about the way the trickster’s voice purred his name made non-Dream Tony feel very uncomfortable. The god’s voice was low, familiar, amused, and almost... affectionate? The Real-Stark climbed a little closer up the stairs to see the wickedly indecent smirk on Loki’s face even clearer. It almost made him drop the box again as his Dream-self stepped up to the platform right in front of the god and those glittering green eyes drank him in with a head-to-toe appraisal.

Loki looked like he wanted Tony on a platter. Or tied to a bed.

Dream-Tony inquired, “I thought it was good to be the king?”

“King or no, as a matter of taste, I accept only gifts freely given.”

“You mean I’m secretly free to go anytime?”

“Not very secretly. You need merely ask.”

Dream-Tony nodded, thoughtful, began slowly opening the buttons of his shirt from the collar down as he strolled only closer, in a manner Real-Tony was disturbed to recognize was pretty accurate.

That was his I’m-going-to-straddle-your-lap swagger.

And that was precisely what occurred. Settling one knee between Loki’s sprawled thigh and one arm of the throne, a hand on his opposite shoulder for support, and then pulling up his other knee to settle similarly on the other side, Dream-Tony settled himself across the lap of the god of lies. His free hand slipped up and tapped Loki’s helmet. “This strikes me as a hazard.”

Real-Tony realized his eyes were wide as saucers and he couldn’t look away, and was in fact tip-toeing closer as though afraid of being caught. Especially as one of Loki’s hands settled on his Dream-duplicate’s lower back and the trickster vanished his helm alone, and used the other hand to pull the inventor down into a kiss that wasn’t even very aggressive; although based on the way Dream-Tony melted into it and gripped Loki’s shoulder tighter, it was more than a little domineering, and delicious.

The Real-Tony Stark tried to tell himself his mouth wasn’t watering, until he saw a flash of tongue and heard a small and unfairly beautiful noise from Loki as Tony’s Dream-self nipped at his mouth playfully and the hand the god had on his back slowly pulled his shirt untucked from his jeans and slid under it, further loosening it until Dream-Tony shrugged out of it altogether after undoing the last buttons.

This was not what Real-Tony had been expecting, in more ways than one. Particularly how the pair on the throne moved together like not only had they done this before, but they knew exactly how to drive one another crazy in subtle ways, as much as hard ones. When Loki vanished the inventor’s belt and slid his hand down Tony’s spine and under the back seat of his pants, the movement was sensual and unhurried, even once it was clear the front of those pants was undone and... so maybe Real-Tony had stepped a bit closer without noticing.

And stood a bit to the side so his own Dream-self blocked less of the view.

Maybe Real-Tony had wanted to see the god’s hand down the front of his pants making him moan and those sharp white teeth biting the side of Dream-Tony’s throat.

Maybe Real-Tony was trying hard not to groan because his pants were suddenly far, far too constrictive in certain special places.

Then the pair on the throne were kissing again, practically necking like teenagers, and from what Real-Tony could see, Loki had a long and very dextrous tongue, and more than knew how to use it. Also long was what Dream-Tony revealed once he managed to reach between them enough to open the god’s leather pants and free a hard-on that made Real-Tony gulp quietly.

So. To review. He now he knew Thor’s little brother had the sort of cock that Real-Tony sometimes missed from his early twenties phase of driving the media batshit by dating a few guys who had taught the younger inventor to really, really appreciate the art of submission. So much so Real-Tony had offered Pepper a strap-on of a similar size halfway through their relationship’s rise and fall, and good times were had by all with it off and on for the rest of that relationship’s duration.

This... meant... nothing. Nothing. “Villain,” Tony muttered to himself in his head, not daring say a damned thing aloud in here. “Loki is a Villain with a capital V and probably dead and-”

Then Dream-Tony’s jeans vanished and Loki slid two long, magic-lubricated fingers into him not-quite-hastily, but visibly curled them hard along the way, making the inventor’s Dream-self moan low and long, hips bucking a little.

So maybe Real-Tony just broke out in a sweat and decided if the god of lies was really dead, the loss of that fingering technique would be a helluva tragedy. Long, slow strokes, but always dragging hard across Dream-Tony’s prostate until the inventor was starting to writhe with him, clinging hard to the god’s armored shoulders and breaking the kiss with a desperate cry when Loki applied a third finger.

“I should walk out,” Real-Tony said in his head. “I should... totally...”

Loki’s elegant wrist executed a twisting motion on the next, harder upstroke, while those fingers stretched Dream-Tony wider open and he emitted a scream.

Real-Tony swore at himself and unbuttoned and unzipped his own jeans with his free hand just to let off the pressure. He didn’t touch himself. Just... couldn’t keep standing there feeling like he’d find zipper-prints on his dick later from the struggle.

Dream-Tony arched up. “My turn, my king.”

Loki shivered, just slightly, and emitted an aroused hiss that made hairs stand up on the back of Real-Tony’s neck just hearing it. “Yes, now ride me.”

Then Dream-Tony bit his lip as Loki’s hand retreated. The inventor sat up closer, and bit at the god’s lower lip gently while one of his hands ran down and guided Loki’s cock into himself, at which point the god’s lips parted for him and captured his own again, inspiring Dream-Tony to begin rocking his hips hard over the god.

Loki gripped his hips and let him get into a rhythm before pulling him pointedly down harder on every down-stroke with extra strength, causing the kiss to break as Dream-Tony began to emit cries of bliss with each jab against his prostate.

The trickster bit his way up from the inventor’s collarbone, along the cords of his throat to his ear, taking the lobe between his teeth, then sucking on it and making his lover’s hips falter, just for a moment. Loki took this as excuse to speed up the pace, his firm grip on the inventor’s hips now fully controlling Dream-Tony’s rise and fall, making the inventor positively wail. “Say my name,” hissed the god.

“Loki,” Dream-Tony panted, voice shaky. “Please, Loki, please, so close.”

“What is it you need, then Anthony? You’ve done so well for your king,” Loki purred, making his lover shudder.

Real-Tony may have gripped his own erection helplessly after it twitched hard.

“L-Loki, I-”

“Do you want to come for your god?” Loki’s own breathing came ragged now.

Dream-Tony’s whole body trembled. “Y-yes!”

“Then let me hear you scream with it,” Loki gave his ass a hard slap on one buttock and hissed, “Now!”

At which point Dream-Tony came with a scream and the god pulled him down hard only a few more times before emitting a breathy moan against his lover’s throat and shuddering with his own release.

Real-Tony’s thought that the god’s open, slack expression was deceptively angelic in beauty was, he told himself firmly, NOT helping him prevent himself coming in his pants to the dream of a possibly-dead trickster god.

Well, recalling the dead bit “helped” in the sense it made him now feel a little bit depressed, and be able to hold back while watching a mirror-image of himself melted over a still-almost-fully-armored god of mischief, who looked to be pulling his lover in for a cool-down kiss, close and lazy, before they parted again and Dream-Tony whimpered. “Fffuck, you’re still so damned hard.”

Loki slid a hand between them and Dream-Tony gasped, hissed and bit at the line of his jaw as a flicker of green light seemed to make the inventor writhe. “And now so are you, Anthony.”

Real-Tony grabbed the box and twisted the top back the opposite way as before hastily with a few clicks and the whole world around him went black and then faded.

And he was sitting on the stool back in his lab with his pants open, breathing heavily and so aroused he ached. He set the box aside on the table next to the concave mirror and leaned heavily over the table, shaking with the effort of not immediately jerking off to that. “What the fuck?” He ran a hand through his hair. “Whaaat the fuck? How? What? Huh?”

“Are you alright, sir? You vanished from all footage for several minutes.”

Tony ran a hand back and forth across his mouth. “Uhm. Yeah. Just in shock.” He stood up awkwardly and headed straight into the lab’s private shower, shucking clothes along the way.

If he had to brace against the wall as he jerked himself off under the hot water half a minute later with a stifled moan, that was shock too.

Right. Shock.

~~

Once he’d finished banishing the initial demons of confusion in the shower, and gotten halfway through a second glass of scotch back in his penthouse (far from the now-perilous box of dream-bubbles) Tony tried very hard to think rationally.

He’d had a dream or two about the god of lies having him against the pane glass instead of breaking it, and over his own bar respectively after the invasion. He’d told himself at the time that dreams are just... never logical, that way. He’d dreamt about walking in on Cap and Bucky Barnes before, too, for fuck’s sakes. Maybe Loki didn’t record it so much as extract it from his own memories, like a dream-catcher to keep it out of his own head?

Recalling Strange’s explanation of how the recordings worked, Tony took another long sip of scotch and dared to contemplate that Loki might have recorded it for later revisitation. There had been some... serious intensity there. Not casual enough for comfort by any stretch of the imagination.

So. What to think about Loki, god of lies, potentially having a sort of crush on him, then? Even if he wasn’t dead, he was still a mass murderer.

 _So are you, aren’t you though?_ hissed an insidious voice in Tony’s head.

Obadiah’s, specifically.

The inventor managed not to throw his glass across the room. Barely.

Very deliberately, he set the glass down, and slowly refilled it from the decanter. Then he raised it. “Cheers, then, to maybe hoping he isn’t dead for all the wrong reasons.” He then downed it.

What to do about the box? He hadn’t stuck around to the end to see if there was a delete option, and he wasn’t sure it would start where he left off if he... went back into that particular bubble. Meaning he’d have to watch himself fucked by a fully armed god of mischief through multiple orgasms, apparently, all over again. From the beginning.

And that beginning had already made him come so hard in his own shower that he’d made embarrassing noises that shower-acoustics would not let him deny in the least. They had echoed, quite a bit.

Tony bit his lip at how not-bad that suddenly sounded. “Shit.”

So of course he went back to the lab immediately.

~~

After witnessing himself come three times, the third in the god’s bed before the whole memory faded to black, there were indeed sigils for whether or not to destroy it, meaning if Strange ever found the box, he wouldn’t stumble across it.

Still, Tony hesitated.

“Maybe... I’ll, uh, find which one is mine before I make that call,” he said aloud.

Not because he might... want to see that again. Maybe more than once.

“I’ll give the fucker credit, he has excellent taste in porn,” Tony sighed before retreating...

And opening the next bubble.

~~

Tony had not been expecting an explosion of rubble from the next side he managed to open, followed by fire and distant screaming. He reflexively shielded his face only to feel a weirdly cold sensation as all the shrapnel passed right through him.

It didn’t take him long to recognize himself stumbling for cover away from the line of flaming automobile wreckage, to figure out this was indeed his own recurring nightmare, and he knew exactly where it was going. Dream-Tony was attempting to make a call, but any second now would be interrupted.

“Please tell me I don’t have to watch all of this to get rid of it?” he rasped.

An interface of the same panels from before appeared, and action around him halted as if he had struck a pause button.

He tried not to think about the fact he hadn’t thought of that earlier at any other point, and what it said about him that he’d been talking to himself only in his head in that... other side of the box.

“Kill it, please,” Tony said. “Delete it. It doesn’t need to be here.”

Back in his lab he set the box aside heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger as he tried to stabilize his own breathing again.

~~

He decided to try one more for the night, and found himself staring up at a sky where all the stars... didn’t seem right, and there was a whirlwind, and suddenly the bridge under him (wow, technicolor) was shattering. He heard shouting in the distance, voices of Loki and Thor, but they were all distorted, and Tony realized he was standing on a single piece of the rainbow bridge, falling, and looked up to see Thor reaching down for... someone not present.

He looked down and saw a rift in space and time.

He decided to hold his ground...

Right up until he saw the other side of the portal again and heard the chittering of Chitauri, and a scream that could only be the trickster’s crash landing.

Well look, another explosion of rock.

Big one.

Tony was trying not to have a panic attack and slowly sat down once his piece of the bridge landed near the crater, forcing himself to watch Chitauri foot-soldiers pull Loki from the rubble. He looked barely alive and one of his legs was bent at very unnatural angles. At first there was squabbling over whether he was alive, then an ominous robed figure appeared and scattered to lower ranks.

“Who are you?” asked the Other.

The lower-ranking creatures seized Loki’s shoulders and lifted him as far as his knees, despite his face contorting at the effect this had on his damaged leg.

Loki tried and failed to lift his head, blood streaming down his face. “A fallen... king...” He coughed violently. “And that’s all I am telling you, until I know your purposes, stranger, and whether you plan to eat me, or aid me.”

The Other cracked him across the face. “Insolent monstrosity.”

Loki spat out blood and managed to lift his head higher. “You have no idea.” His flesh then went blue, his eyes red, and the guards holding him screamed as they were helpless to escape being encased in ice, which cracked easily to let Loki move even as it sealed the Other, too, in a block of ice, but in his case only up to the neck.

The foot-soldiers were floating in their own mini-glaciers on either side now.

The trickster managed to drag himself further upright by gripping his ice. “I am a monster, yes, but I can be useful. I require healing. You require knowledge of how I arrived here for your master, or you would not be such a pitiful excuse for a diplomat instead of an insecure lieutenant at someone else’s hand. Who leads you, petty slave-driver?!” Loki hissed.

The Other struggled hard, but the ice grew only thicker, even as Loki struggled to keep himself supported on one arm, clinging so hard to the ice that blood trickled from his hand, all to keep his eyes on level with the Other’s face, which eventually rolled to peer at him more closely. He then cackled unkindly. “Thanos.”

For a moment, Loki’s face remained unchanged. Then he encased the Other’s head in ice too and tried hard to scramble away with a look of abject terror in his eyes. “No, no, no-” He got only several feet, grimacing with every impact to his damaged leg as he forced himself to put just enough weight on it to propel himself a bit faster.

A not-distant-enough boom occurred, that of a throne landing nearby, behind Loki and his ice sculptures.

“I am impressed, slightly, by you who could so humiliate one of my most loyal lieutenants. Who are you, and to whom do your loyalties lie, wounded one?” Thanos boomed, and Tony watched the horror become nearly tears just before becoming stoically wrathful again very deliberately. After a deep breath, the god forced himself to turn and face one of the most terrifying beings the inventor had ever lain eyes on: red of face, with deep grooves in his chin, glowing pale eyes, and armor more advanced than Iron Man’s, or anything he’d seen of Asgard’s.

Not to mention the giant looming stone throne of death that was apparently hover-capable.

“I am Loki, of Asgard,” the god called back. “And I am loyal to myself, but I am open to bargaining for certain deals. I... have a crown to reclaim, and vengeance to be wrought, warmonger, and I also happen know what you’re after.”

Thanos raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I know where to find you an infinity stone,” Loki’s voice wavered at the end, and Tony could see his fists tighten at the failure, but he managed to droop, as though it were blood loss. “I may... need some healing first, however.”

“Hmm. You spoke of Asgard. They were one of the kingdoms who betrayed and banished me, little Loki. What god did they name you?”

“Mischief and chaos. Odin is dead, and his son hurled me into an abyss, so let us say my loyalties are... flexible.”

“Well then.” He waved a hand and the whole chunk of stone under Loki’s body levitated upward towards his throne. “We shall then, perhaps speak of deals.” He held his other hand over the god and light fell from it.

Tony shut his eyes as another agonized scream tore the air.

When the light faded, Loki was whole, albeit still covered in his own blood. He raised his head, very slowly, as the rest of the rocks below them too, rumbled, and rose, and rose alongside Thanos’ throne, and it all went dark.

~~

Once he found himself back in his lab, the inventor set the cube down, and reached for his now-watery glass of whiskey, and then changed his mind, stumbled over to the nearest sink and vomited.

“H-holy fuck.” His whole body was shaking. Between his own recurring, wracking flashbacks to seeing the other side of that portal, and the addition of Loki’s screams still echoing in his head, his entire system was in uproar and his head was swimming.

If the invasion was what Loki had to do, to survive... THAT thing?

No wonder he had seemed almost relieved even after they caught him, and in spite of the Hulk having nearly shattered his spine.

Since he didn’t have Thor on speed-dial these days, Tony called someone magical. They knew all sorts of things. “Strange, it’s Tony.”

“Are you all right? You sound shaken, what’s wrong?”

“Do you know what a Thanos is?”

“I... where did you hear that name?”

“In-in-in the dream, box, thing. L-Loki fell, when the rainbow-bridge broke, a-and Thanos found him and I saw it, him, his throne, and the Chitauri armada half-hidden behind mountains. Thanos sent them. He’s after Infinity Stones.”

“Mother of god,” Strange breathed. “You’re alright, though, Tony?”

“After seeing that? I’m gonna... have to get back to you, there, but thanks.”

“He’s one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Even nightmares on the Astral Plane speak of him only in whispers,” the sorcerer said slowly. “He cannot be fought by the forces of Earth, we’re not strong enough.”

“Well... that’s gonna be a problem since one of the Avengers has the Mind stone built into his forehead.”

“Oh. Shit.”

“So... Can you reach Asgard for me?”

“I can try, but it may take me a few days to prepare. Interstellar and interdimensional factors are-”

“Just... can you do it? We need Thor, right now. He needs to bring Asgard in on this, especially if we can’t do it alone.”

“You’re right. I’ll get right on it, and Stark?”

“Yeah?”

“You said that the dream was Loki’s?”

“Nightmare. Definitely nightmare.”

“How did he escape Thanos?”

“He tricked him, into thinking he’d deliver another stone, in exchange for Earth. Remember the invasion deal? He came up with it on the fly. He looked... fucking terrified before that. Nothing like the prospect of imminent death to shift one’s priorities.”

“But he kept the stone from Thanos’ hands?”

“And stole one, the Mind one.”

The sorcerer inhaled sharply. “I hope for his sake then, that he is as dead as we suspect, or Thanos will do... only far worse to him. He may have bought the universe more time in existence than it seems.”

“Yeah...” Tony ran a hand over his face. “He was a jerk about it, but yeah.”

“You don’t understand, Tony. The Mind stone has been in Thanos’ possession for a thousand years and he committed more atrocities with it than I dare speak of. If Loki stole that weapon, and it has been turned it into an ally of Earth... he might actually have a hero streak after all, albeit a horribly self-serving one.”

“Well, Doc, we’d know all about that, wouldn’t you and me?”

“... This is true.”

“All the more reason we need to bring Asgard in on this.”

“Absolutely right. Oh, damn, so much to prepare-”

“You do that. I’m... going to kill a few braincells with whiskey.”

“Take it easy, Tony. The human mind can take only so many horrors.”

“I’m too necessary to stop now, but thanks Doc. Goodnight.”

_Click._

Tony hauled himself back over to his whiskey glass, lifted it with shaking hands, and drained it, then reached for the decanter to refill it. He repeated the process twice, then managed to reach the elevator back to the penthouse, whereupon he set the decanter on the table, his empty glass next to it, and curled up with his arms around a decorative pillow and his face buried in the back of his couch.

“Friday?” came a muffled request.

“Yes, sir?”

“Play me some Black Sabbath. Highest non-ear-damaging volume.”

He tried to let the noise sink through his skull to fill the horrible terrified silence that seemed to have hollowed out his entire body. Eventually, he managed to sleep, and Friday decreased the volume by slow increments in accordance with his breathing smoothing out at last.

He could’ve sworn he felt fingers brush his hair briefly, just before he fell.

Blissfully, he did not dream.

If a tall shadow passed over him, Friday didn’t seem to detect it.

~~

Tony snapped awake too early, and suddenly remembered all the events of the previous day with horrible vividness. He dropped his head back down with a pathetic groan. “Friday, send a memo to Strange to keep me updated on progress, and call J-Vision, will you?”

“Of course, sir.”

He forced himself up and stumbled towards the coffee machine blearily to the sound of a phone dialing on the Starkpad he kept by the bar. He picked it up when he heard Vision do the same.

“Hello, Tony.”

Smiling a bit bitter-sweetly at the familiar voice, the inventor said, “Morning, sunshine. How’s life with the Avengers?”

“It goes well, but pardon me, you sound a bit out of it, yourself.”

“I got some... extremely catastrophically bad news, actually, kid.”

“How so?”

“The, uh, Mind stone in your head. Does it have memories from before you in it?”

“I suppose it does. It is possible Miss Maximoff could access them.”

“She might not be glad if she did. I found out who Loki got it from, and uh, that Loki effectively stole two infinity stones from one of the most powerful and dangerous beings in the universe. He’s also going to want them back.”

“Ah. I... had suspected it would be a potential hazard, for other beings to wish to rip it from my head.”

“I’d miss you terribly, kid, if that happened. We all would. Not just because we’d need you to stand a chance fighting him off when he gets here, but that’s a factor too. Let the team know that I’ve got Strange trying to reach Asgard, but it’ll take him a few days, and that as soon as we have him down here... we’ll need to have an emergency meeting.”

“Why have you not said his name?”

Tony snorted. “You know, you may not be the JARVIS you were, but you’re sharper enough to remind me of who he was named after when you don’t let me get away with shit, Vi.”

“I... I’m flattered, actually.”

“His name is a taboo word in a lot of the galaxy. I dunno if it would unlock memories in your head you don’t need, until I talk it over with Strange some more.”

“Oh. Where did you acquire this knowledge, may I ask?”

“I uh... found an eye witness, of sorts. Thor brought me a puzzle of sorts from Asgard, and I unlocked it, and it... sent me on my own vision quest a lot like the one that caused him to knock you awake, actually, but with more Loki in it.”

“More Loki?”

“I... saw him caught by the guy after he fell from Asgard. It was genuinely one of the most terrifying things I’ve had to watch someone else live through.”

“Knowledge, like power, often comes at a cost.”

“Yeah... yeah, it does.”

“I’ll inform the others. Thank you, Tony.”

“Thanks. Bye, kid.”

_Click._

~~

Once showered free of the stink of fear and whiskey, breakfasted, and otherwise out of excuses not to go back, Tony returned to the lab to stare at the box further.

“I’m pretty sure it can’t get worse,” he said.

He continued to stare at it for several minutes, his heartbeat too fast.

Finally, he turned another side and after deciphering how to open it, he did.

And found himself back in his own penthouse, but holding the box.

“I wondered when you would find this side.”

Tony turned around to see Loki at his bar. In a charcoal suit so unfairly tailored it took the inventor a moment to realize the god really was staring right into his eyes. He blinked. “Pardon?”

“This is the side intended to instruct anyone clever enough to open this box in how to use it, and what you may find. It is thus interactive,” Loki explained.

“Why my penthouse?”

“This side is designed to simulate your ‘home’ environment.”

“So... you’re a recording?”

“I’m made up of the spells holding this box together, Stark. I’m not un-self-aware, nor are my words pre-programmed. I am the box, answering you in your own language.”

Tony tilted his head back. “How many more dream-bubbles in here?”

“Five.”

“How many are mine?”

“Three total, one of which you’ve already viewed.”

Tony blinked. “The other two?”

Loki glanced out the plate-glass window, and then at the bar. “Ones that my maker found of particular interest, let us say.”

“The... same interest that led to the throne one?”

The illusion of the god inclined his head. “Just so.”

“So––two sex dreams of mine, one nightmare of mine, a nightmare of Loki’s, and... how many more sex dreams of his?”

Loki held up a model of the box, with his own “guide” level the bottom of it, the intricate foundation seal at the top, and the three other sides darkened that Tony had already seen. The remaining five each lit up different colors as he proceeded to name them: “One further ‘sex dream’ you’ve not yet seen, and two further nightmares not yours, but which your Avengers will doubtlessly find very useful in finding more about Thanos.” The last two unlit sides, presumably, were Tony’s dreams.

Memorizing the sides instantly, the inventor then asked, “Does that other sex dream also star me?”

“Of course.”

Tony hesitated. “Why?”

“Could you not be asked the same about your own dreams?”

The inventor opened his mouth, then closed it and frowned. He then stood up and strolled over to the illusory Loki at the bar. Closer up, he could see it was a hologram-like projection, rather than anything more substantial. “So you’re the box.”

“I am the box.”

“Is Loki dead right now?”

The illusion smiled a very wicked smile that reminded Tony far too much of the dream about the throne. He then leaned in and kissed Tony’s cheek near his ear, surprisingly tangible and whispered softly, “Of course not, Tony.”

Then it all went dark and the inventor was back in his lab. Numbly, he had Friday add the data the box just gave him to mark which sides were Avengers-pertinent, and which ones she was to assure everyone were complete duds with no recordings in.

He considered visiting the other sex dream of Loki’s, caressed it with a fingertip, but then smirked and put the box into lockdown on one wall.

Maybe after dinner. It would make a great dessert.

~~

Tony wound up missing dinner altogether due to Doombots keeping himself and the other available Avengers in New York busy until the wee hours of the morning. After shucking off damaged armor, and falling like a corpse into bed, Tony was unconscious almost instantaneously.

And then he was in his penthouse, but the dream started off hazy.

“This usually works.”

“Well, performance issues-” Tony found a hand around his throat and was pinned hard up against the glass. Loki’s face was almost close enough to be out of focus and he had a grin like a fox finding a loose board in a chicken coop.

“Oh, Anthony, you do know better than that by now.”

The inventor was vaguely aware that he might have had this dream before a few times, but it faded fast because Loki leaned in closer to hiss in his ear, “I could always provide you a vivid reminder, if you might be interested.”

“Do I get defenestrated if I say no?”

“Would you prefer that method of exit?”

“I would honestly... prefer your mouth over here,” he said faster than he could hesitate, gripping the god’s hair and steering his head until he could capture that mouth with his own, feeling Loki’s smirk against his lips right before that silver-tongue slipped between them and Tony’s head began to swim.

Had it been this good previously? Teasing, smothering, just the right kind of dirty, and fit to make the infamous playboy inventor feel knocked back on his heels, especially as the hand around his throat slid down the front of his shirt, with a sound like faint searing. Upon reaching the base of the t-shirt, it took only a sharp tug for the seared line to split the fabric down the middle and another at the shirt's lower back for Tony to let his arms relax and allow the shirt to fall away unhindered.

The inventor managed to get a bit of his own back by reaching between them to squeeze Loki’s erection and stroke it through the leather, making the trickster suck in a breath just quick enough Tony could break the kiss and demand, “Armor off, this time, I never get to fucking see you properly,” before tugging the god back down and feeling metal and leather melt away where Loki pressed against him: all but his trousers gone, and the inventor moaned in his throat, letting greedy hands run up the god’s abdomen and chest only to seize Loki’s shoulders when the trickster hiked him up the window further with a ragged moan.

Then the trickster’s mouth broke away with a bite at his lips, his chin, and finally down to one side of his throat, tongue teasing between each increasingly-sharp bite until the one high on Tony’s neck hurt so much he gasped and bucked his hips, making Loki give a low groan and suck hard at the skin there, then release with a pop, only to bite again, just a little higher, and sharper.

“I do appreciate your body being as delicious as your intellect, Anthony,” he purred, slipping one finger under the waist of the mortal’s jeans before abruptly vanishing them and guiding one of Tony’s legs about his hip, and pulling the other to rest over one of his arms where the god’s hand pressed to the glass beside them.

“Could say the same, now give me another taste,” Tony demanded, tugging the god’s head back up for more of that almost-overwhelming kissing; although the inventor gasped a little at the feel of the god’s free hand dipping to his ass and sliding one long, slick finger inside, making the inventor buck when he curled it.

Hazily, the inventor wondered if this dream was actually the same as others he’d had like it or-

The kiss broke as Tony threw his head back against the glass with a cry once the second finger breached him and Loki began doing a fair imitation of dreams past.

But had they been Tony’s? Probably not. Did he care?

“F-fuck, your hands––”

“Yes, I do enjoy you doing so.”

Clearly, Tony was too far gone to tell, rocking his hips into the motions of the fingers driving him up the window by squirming, gasping increments. He whimpered when Loki bit that spot again, albeit more tenderly, then made a near-inhuman rasping cry when Loki had three fingers spreading him just like-

Just like-

Fuck it, that didn’t matter half as much as having more. At least Loki had lost the pants, too, in time for that. When had he lost them? The inventor didn’t even care.

“Loki, please,” Tony hissed.

The god’s eyes blazed and he removed his hand, replacing it with something much more substantial and pressing himself as close to Tony’s front as possible with his whole body, hiking the inventor’s outheld leg further to open him wide and draw a gorgeous mewl from him. “Say that again.”

“Loki please fuck me!”

Tony himself was pretty certain he had never before heard himself actually howl the way he did when the god of lies gleefully obeyed, but he lost himself in the push and pull, rocking his own body into it as much as possible until he was seeing stars and realized the noise in his ears was his own voice saying the god’s name like a mantra until he actually screamed as he came, and the god slowed, but didn’t stop.

“My god please come for me,” he whimpered in Loki’s ear once he got some breath back into his lungs.

The god made that moan, the pretty orgasm-achieved one, and his expression cracked open into something softer making him seem younger for a moment, as he lost himself to a wave of pleasure. When he tried to hide his face against Tony’s neck the human grabbed his hair at the back of his neck and pulled him back enough to stare into his eyes until they fluttered open and regained focus on him with a look like bewildered shock, just for a moment, until Tony pulled him into a kiss: slow and lazy, before the god pulled out of him and the dream melted away leaving the inventor feeling strangely cheated out of a couple further orgasms, right before the next, much more boring dream with no Loki in it dragged him into its undertow.

~~

Tony woke up feeling incredibly well-rested, but still also very, very sore.

“Fucking Doombots,” he groaned, running a hand across bruises along his ribcage. He muttered further when his ass of all places felt tender. He hadn’t remembered those ones.

He fumbled through washing his face and was halfway through brushing his teeth before he saw the absolutely enormous hickey on the side of his neck in the mirror and almost dropped his toothbrush. He spat in the sink. “That fucking bastard.”

~~

When, two days later, Dr. Strange and Thor met him on the roof of the newer Avengers base, he still had the hickey, but had managed to stop absently touching it whenever his thoughts drifted.

“Tony,” the Thunderer boomed. “You have urgent news, I hear.”

“Yeah. And many questions. Come on. Steve is downstairs, but the rest of the party aren’t quite as early.”

Once at the meeting table, Tony picked up the travel case he’d transported the dream box in, and cracked it open. “Now, I have a feeling I already know the answer to this, but Thor have you ever actually seen this box before?” He set it in the middle of the table while Dr. Strange looked at him funny.

“But you said-” the sorcerer started.

Tony waved a hand. “Thor?”

“Is that one of my brother’s puzzle-boxes?” he sounded confused.

The inventor’s lips formed a thin line. “Yep. I was right.” He coughed. “I have footage of you delivering it to me, saying it was found in your bro’s cell. I could play it, but I think we already have a guess what the fuck happened there.”

“Loki is dead,” Thor said quietly.

“Not according to the guide in this box, he isn’t, but I can’t re-open it. It’s either single-use, or single-use-per-user,” Tony sighed.

“You opened it?” the Thunderer now sounded sincerely impressed.

“It’s got dreams in it. His and a few of mine. Most of them are locked and I’m not opening them because they’re mine that he borrowed to make a point. His dreams in it, though... well, for one, he left memory of when he crash-landed after the bi-frost. Nightmare-memory, in any case,” Tony said. “Thanos found him, Thor.”

Thor’s face fell, appearing just as horrified as Loki had in the nightmare.

“What’s a Thanos?” said Steve. “And if Loki delivered this thing, how do we know it isn’t faked somehow?”

“It is not something easily faked, even for masters of magic,” Strange cut in. “Tony and I discussed the mechanics of its workings, before he had quite cracked it. When he cracked that particular side of the puzzle...” he looked to the inventor.

“I was on the edge of a panic attack because Miss Maximoff’s horrifying dream visions now have been given a run for their money,” Tony said. “It’s legit, Steve. Strange confirmed the name of this guy, Thanos, and that Loki’s failed invasion of New York didn’t just keep the Tesseract out of his hands, it stole the Mind gem from this guy too. Not in time to prevent him from committing a lot of atrocities with it long before Loki showed up... but probably preventing some future ones.”

“You think he failed it on purpose?” Thor asked.

“To get away from Thanos, I’m sure he would’ve done anything,” Tony said. “I would’ve. I would. I never want to see him again. His face now haunts my own nightmares, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone... but if you ask me to... I’ll unlock it for you three to see before the others get here.”

The others exchanged looks, then nodded.

Tony exhaled and closed his eyes tight. “Great. One more time then.” He picked up the box, flipped the appropriate sliders and pressed the appropriate engravings, and just before he twisted it open, said, “Grab on to my arms for a sec.”

Thor and Strange on one side, Steve on the other, Tony cracked open the worst nightmare he could think of, and dragged three more along for the ride.

~~

Once it ended, Thor was crying, Steve was stiff enough he might have re-frozen, and Dr. Strange immediately collapsed into one of the chairs and made a noise like he too had trouble keeping his breakfast down after that.

Steve was the next one to slowly, creakily make his way into a chair, staring into the middle distance, while Thor was gripping Tony’s arm hard enough the inventor made a pained noise and prodded his hand until it loosened a little.

The god stared him in the eye. “I...”

“That seem like him authentically, then?” Tony rasped, still shaking himself, but not quite sitting down, clung to by the god as he still was.

“That was my brother. And I...”

Tony turned and touched the side of his head. “Thor, I know. There’s others, about Thanos, in that box. Other nightmares. I’ve––seen them. He survived. He’s alive. And now you know why he had to fake his death. You know what Thanos would do to him, for this, don’t you?”

Thor’s eyes cleared and he wiped at one of them, then slowly nodded. “Yes. Thank you, Tony. I can hardly b-breathe, actually.”

“Good to know even gods get panic attacks sometimes, but try to breathe evenly with me, yeah?”

After a minute or so, the god of thunder was breathing normally again. “Thanos must die,” he rumbled, and an ominous echo of it seemed to come from overhead.

“That’s the spirit,” Tony said. “Now have a sit, and let’s figure out how the hell we’re explaining this to the others.”

His expression twisted. “Difficult.”

“Speaking of... Doc, Vision said he thinks the Mind stone has memories in it from before his creation, and that Maximoff might be able to access them,” Tony explained. “Would that compromise him, or Earth? Is it safe to say the dude’s name anywhere near a stone that was under his control that long, since there might be connection back to him somehow, from those memories?”

The sorcerer’s brow furrowed. “I would have to aid her, and provide protective wards to make certain, on the Astral Plane.”

“Good, because I lied and told everybody else but the pair of them to come tomorrow,” the inventor said fluidly.

Steve and Strange glared at him, but Thor only smirked with a bit of odd fondness and muttered, “You do remind me of my brother more than any other mortal I have met, Tony Stark.”

“For better or worse,” Steve sighed, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Though Natasha figured it out and bullied all this out of me last night, if it helps,” Tony added. “At gunpoint. Showing her the nightmare, I thought she might shoot me after, but she’s on board, and just didn’t want to come today.”

At that, Steve chuckled. “Of course.”

“I do not look forward to explaining this to my father either,” Thor sighed.

A lightbulb went off in Tony’s brain and he smacked a hand over his face.

The others stared at him as he slowly lowered said hand, then giggled.

“Well, you could let me explain,” Tony suggested, with a grin. “While Steve and Strange here work with Wanda and Vi, in fact, but, heh, you’re gonna have to trust me.”

“Run,” Steve stage whispered.

“Tony,” the sorcerer intoned gravely.

“Hey, why not multitask, I ask you?” Tony responded with cheer.

Thor agreed, but only haltingly.

~~

Thor had been very hesitant to go with Tony’s “private audience” idea and was even more shellshocked that Odin agreed to it, and sent out the guards from the hall shortly afterwards.

Tony strolled down the length of the great hall, smiling brightly as he strode right up the steps of the king’s throne and paused with a frown. “So. How long you planning to play king then, sweetheart?”

After only a moment, the guise of Odin dropped, and Loki vanished the scepter up his sleeve. “I wondered when you’d work this part out.”

Tony sauntered closer, leaned in close enough he had to rest a hand on one arm of the throne, and kissed the god’s cheek near his ear, in mimic of the dream-box’s guide interface. “Good, now how do we kill the bastard?”

Loki responded by pulling the inventor into a sprawl across his lap by expedient tie-yank. “You believe I have that worked out? Why else would I need you?”

“Aside from the evidence you’re happy to see me? Or did the scepter wind up in your pants-pockets?”

“The feel of you in my lap and the taste of you may be very significant factors, but Anthony, dear, you are rather more than a one-night stand, are you not?”

“For you? A lot more. A lot.”

“Then for you, so shall I be.”

“No tricks?”

“No. Only a gift freely given.” He then kissed the inventor firmly.

Thor never did work out why it took them over two hours to emerge from the throne room, nor did he dare to dream.

**Author's Note:**

> I was in a heavily medicated insomniac haze when I thought "What if Loki had a Pensieve equivalent but for dreams?" and my brain answered "frostiron porn, of course" and the result be this story.


End file.
